


don't leave so soon

by ObscureReference



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 20:38:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12373590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: “We’ll be siblings again,” Owain finally said, resting his head on Severa’s shoulder. “If not by blood then at least by bond.”“What?” Severa said.It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. “You asked what it’s like. I’m telling you.”He was sure she had been referencing death and not their hypothetical next life, but Inigo hummed and said, “Go on, then,” and Severa shuddered. So Owain continued.





	don't leave so soon

**Author's Note:**

> I intended this to be more ship-y, but it ended up being more gen and I didn't want anything to seem forced. I think it still worked out pretty well though. 
> 
> The first scene in this fic has been plaguing me since forever.

In another world, they meet like this.

 

\---

 

“In the next life,” Odin said, blood bubbling in the corner of his mouth. No. He was Owain now. There was no one else around; they were Owain and Severa and Inigo once more. “Let’s be born together again in the next life.”

“Of course we will,” Inigo said softly. “We can’t even be separated…” He breathed in sharply, pained.  Owain’s heart skipped a beat. “In death.”

Inigo’s fingers were mere inches from Owain’s own. Owain stretched his arm and swallowed a hiss as the movement pulled at the slice in his side. Even when trying his hardest, Owain still couldn’t reach him. The gap between their fingertips stretched on for miles.

Owain stopped trying. He let his arm go slack against the floor, barely resisting the urge to curl up on himself. They had grazed death so many times, and this was finally how it ended. All three of them, as Inigo said. Together.

“So morbid,” he chided. Inigo chuckled lowly.

“Hey,” Severa wheezed. “Don’t leave me out.”

“Never,” Inigo said. He had closed his eyes at some point. “You’ll be our sister, of course.”

Owain’s lungs burned.

Out of the three of them—the only three left alive in the room that had become a battlefield, though not for long—Severa was the only one who remained upright. She used the wall as a crutch, one arm wrapped around her stomach. Owain couldn’t see the wound there, but he watched out of the corner of his eye as she placed her back to the wall and slid down with a grimace. Selena’s foot nudged his thigh.

“You’re telling me—” Severa coughed. “That I’d have to live in the same house as you two? As if.” She fidgeted. “I can barely take living in the castle with you now. And the castle is—”

She coughed again, cutting herself off. Inigo cracked an eye open to look at her. Meanwhile, Owain was pondering when the stone under his cheek had stopped feeling so uncomfortable.

It was because of the blood loss, he belatedly realized. That also explained why it felt as though his head was stuffed with cotton.

At some point, Inigo had closed his eyes again.

“Hey,” Severa said after the coughing had tapered off and they had been quiet for too long. “What, um. What do you think it’s like?”

Her voice was soft, but the tremble in it was still audible.

Owain steeled himself. It took every ounce of willpower and the remaining strength he didn’t know he had to push himself up. He caught Selena making a face and Inigo gathering his own strength, but none of them commented until Owain and Inigo had both settled on either side of Severa, propping their backs against the wall the way the same way she had. It took a long, long time before they reached her, but they eventually made it.

There was so much red splattered on the floor and their shirts; Owain wasn’t sure if it was more their blood or more the blood of the Faceless that now lay on the floor from some loyalists’ last ditch effort to avenge the late King Garon.

How pointless, they had all agreed. Owain could remember the way Leo had shaken his head and Niles had scoffed when they’d heard Facless had breached the castle grounds. Owain had thought it foolhardy as well. Of course they couldn’t lose.

Now he hoped Lord Leo wouldn’t think less of him for meeting his end this way.

Inigo couldn’t keep himself upright. He leaned too far over, and Severa let him lay in her lap, for once not complaining of the closeness. Her fingers tangled themselves in his hair. There was dirt under her nails.

“We’ll be siblings again,” Owain finally said, resting his head on Severa’s shoulder. “If not by blood then at least by bond.”

“What?” Severa said.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. “You asked what it’s like. I’m telling you.”

He was sure she had been referencing death and not their hypothetical next life, but Inigo hummed and said, “Go on, then,” and Severa shuddered. So Owain continued.

“We’ll grow up with our parents,” he said. “With no more time travel or wars to finish. We’ll live in peace.”

“Peace?” Inigo echoed, his nose pressed against Severa’s knee. “I thought you needed villains to vanquish. What will the great hero Odin Dark do in a world of peace?”

His voice sounded far away. Owain said, “I’ll write books. Or explore the new world at my leisure. Even great heroes need a break, you know.” He felt Severa twitch. “You can dance in front of real crowds. Like you always said you would.”

“What about me?” Severa asked, voice small. Her bony shoulder dug into Owain’s cheek. He loved them both so much.

He reached down blindly to squeeze her hand.

“You can travel with me,” he said. “Or explore all the career options you didn’t get to before.”

“Fighting’s pretty much the only thing I’m good at,” she murmured. “What would _I_ do in a world of peace?”

“Anything you want,” Owain said.

Inigo had long since gone quiet. Owain had shut his eyes so he wouldn’t look.

“What…” It was growing more difficult for both of them to speak. “What about Lady Camilla? Or… everyone else…”

Did she mean her friends in Nohr or the ones in Ylisse, who would never know what happened to them? It was hard to tell. It was hard to think.

“They’ll be there too,” Owain said. “Fate would not be so cruel as to separate us without a proper ending. We… we haven’t even said goodbye yet.”

Severa’s breathing was labored. Her long hair fell limp on Owain’s cheek. For some reason Owain thought about a childhood memory. One where he and Cynthia and Brady had bounced around in a flower patch playing at heroes until Brady’s allergies got the best of him and he had an asthma attack in the bushes. Severa sounded a lot worse than Brady had, and Brady had sounded bad.

“That sounds nice,” Severa sighed. Then she fell still.

Owain waited. He would join Severa and Inigo in a moment. The throbbing in his side had dulled to the point that he could barely feel it.

It was not the way he had imagined he would go, but he was grateful he wasn’t alone, if saddened by the fact his friends would not get to live much longer than he. Granted, it already felt like they had lived lifetimes. Three lifetimes, technically. One for every world they’d visited. They’d seen a lot in their twenty-odd years. Owain hadn’t been joking when he said they deserved a break.

He could not say he was dying with any regrets, except perhaps that he didn’t want Lord Leo or Niles stumbling upon his corpse amongst those of so foul a beast. There were much more dignified ways to go, after all.

But if that was the most he had to complain about, he supposed he’d lived an all right life after all.

 

\---

 

In another life, it goes like this:

“Come on!” Elise moaned. She tugged at Xander’s hand, clearly more energetic than he. “Come on, come on, come on! Or else we’ll miss it!”

Xander wore a small smile, Leo noted. So he wasn’t as put-out by this sudden excursion as his solemn face would imply. Elise pulled him ahead of the group with more strength than her small stature would suggest as well.

“Miss what?” Xander asked. “Elise, you haven’t told us where we’re going.”

“Now, now,” Camilla chimed in from Leo’s left. A car sped by Leo’s right, a little faster than he thought proper for the speed limits in the area. He made a mental note to keep Elise from ducking into the street without looking. “Let Elise have her fun. A little spontaneity is good for the heart.”

“I don’t care where we’re going,” Leo said as they turned another street corner, seemingly at random. “But can we at least have an idea of the final destination?”

Elise suddenly dropped Xander’s hand and jogged ahead of them. Leo, Camilla, and Xander trotted along at the same pace as they had been, sharing a look with one another. Elise waited on the next corner, hands on her hips as she waited for her siblings to catch up.

“I don’t know!” Elise announced.

Camilla cocked her head. Xander frowned.

“You don’t know?” Leo said. “Then are we just wandering around randomly?”

He supposed Elise and Camilla were always telling him to get out more, but he hadn’t expected them to resort to sudden, random walks around the city.

Elise shook her head, her curled pigtails swishing this way and that.

“I have a feeling,” she said. “We really need to be at a certain place at a certain time. I just don’t know why.”

Xander said, “Elise, you—”

Elise took off again.

“I can feel it in my tummy!” she shouted over her shoulder. “So come on! Or else we’re going to miss it!”

Leo looked at Camilla. Camilla looked at Xander. Xander looked at the empty spot on the street Elise had just been.

“I suppose Elise has been prone to flights of fancy before,” Xander said slowly. Leo translated that as, _I’m trying really hard to be a good older brother even though this is really weird._

“We shouldn’t lose her,” Camilla drawled. Leo thought that was the best solution for keeping Elise out of the street. Then they all noticed how far ahead Elise had gotten and chased after her.

They caught up to her on the next street through the virtue of Elise having short legs and the fact she suddenly stopped short at the corner, mouth agape and eyes wide. By the time they reached her, she had started to do the “dance” Leo had come to associate with excitement, though it was less of a dance and more of Elise shifting her weight from foot to foot.

Leo was on the verge of panting by the time they caught her. He would have worn something better than a heavy sweater if he had known he’d be running that day.

Xander was the first to catch their sister, with Camilla and Leo not too far behind. He laid a broad hand on her shoulder.

“Elise, what’re you—”

Another voice cut Xander off, along with the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Inigo, give it back!”

Elise gasped in delight at whatever she saw.

Leo’s heart stopped.

As if in slow motion, he turned his head to the source of the noise.

A group of three approached at top speed, the two in back seemingly chasing the one in front. The young man in the lead—who had to be around Leo’s age, if maybe a little older—waved a book in the air and didn’t notice he was a few scarce feet from running into Elise and Xander.

“This is a goldmine, Owain!” Inigo called over his shoulder. “You can pry it out of my cold, dead hands!”

In front of Leo, Xander breathed in sharply. Leo couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene to look at his face, but it must have resembled Leo’s own.

“That’s my private journal!” Owain shouted back. “It’s private property!”

“It’s hilarious is what it is!”

Inigo was running fast and not at all paying attention to where he was going. He was either going to slam into the street or one of Leo’s siblings at any second.

The girl at the back of the pack realized this too. She practically growled, “You idiot! Watch where you’re—”

Inigo finally looked ahead of him. At that same moment, Xander pulled Elise back in an attempt to shield her. Elise squawked.

Then, at the last second, Inigo twisted on the ball of his foot with a dancer’s grace and avoided bowling into Xander by scant inches. He spun around them and didn’t skip a beat, still clutching the journal as he ran, his cocky grin never leaving his face.

“ _Inigo_!” Owain whined. He sprinted past without even a glance, but Leo stared, dumbstruck, sudden memories of the last time he saw that face surfacing in his mind. How could he have ever forgotten that face? That voice?

Gods, where was Niles?

Leo’s head spun with new memories of another lifetime. He struggled to stay in the here and now. Odin as Owain, Laslow as Inigo. Her name might have changed as well, but that was clearly Selena coming up in the rear of their group.

Out of the corner of his eye, Leo saw Camilla looking as awestruck as he’d ever seen her. Her lips had parted in surprise.

Inigo and Owain—Laslow and Odin—passed by before Leo or anyone else could catch their bearings, but when Selena, trailing only a few feet behind the other two, ran by, Camilla’s hand shot out, catching her around the upper arm.

Selena jerked to a stop. Her face morphed with annoyance. She turned, opening her mouth to snap at Camilla, and then they truly saw one another.

Selena’s eyes grew to the size of moons. She stared at Camilla for a long, long moment. Leo bit his tongue, wondering if they were remembering the same things he was.

Then Selena’s eyes snapped to the retreating figures of Owain and Inigo, who were both too caught up in their own back-and-forth to notice they had lost a member of their team. Selena looked between them and Camilla rapidly, clearly torn.

“Selena,” Camilla breathed. “Dear.”

Selena pulled back, stumbling over her feet as she hastily walked backwards, never once looking away from Camilla.  

“I’ll be back,” she said quickly. “I’ll be right back.” She turned on her heel, chasing after the boys once more. There was significant distance between them now. “Get back here! Guys, _come back_!”

For a moment Camilla gawked. She breathed in.

“Oh no,” Camilla muttered to herself. “That won’t do at all.”

Then she took off after Selena like the five inch pumps she was wearing were a natural part of her. Her movement finally shook Leo from the reverie he had fallen into.

“Xander,” Leo said, unblinking. “Elise. Do you remember…”

“I sure do now!” Elise shouted. “Oh, I was so right! My tummy has never led me wrong!”

Xander was a little more star struck.

“It is disconcerting, but yes, I believe so,” he said slowly. “But Laslow…”

Laslow, who was also Inigo, had turned a corner and disappeared. Camilla and Selena were not far behind.

Elise hopped from foot to foot.

“What are you waiting for?” she cried. “Go after them!”

Then she chased after them too.

She was right, of course.

Leo had never been so quick to run in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on my [tumblr!](http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/)


End file.
